So, the other day, I got an invite to Google Plus that turned out to take me to a page that told me the Google Plus beta was closed. I was sorely disappointed, but luckily I got a real invitation that let me in later on in the day.

For the last two days, I’ve been playing around with Google Plus. I’ve tried out their features, chatted with some friends in my circles, hungout, and found a few bugs as well.

Here’s some of my first impressions of Google Plus.

Google Plus Overview

Ok, first off, if you’ve been away from the internet or otherwise sequestered (for the 12 jurors on the Casey Anthony trial), Google Plus is Google’s newest social networking product.

Google has taken another step in expanding into the social networking market. Google plus approaches social networking from a different angle. Rather than networking to one huge group, Google plus takes the concept that people have different categories of friends and puts them into circles.

Beyond that, Google has a stream of updates very similar to Facebook, with the major difference being that you can limit the circles that are able to see your stream.

Everything starts with your circles.

However, Google Plus then gives you a couple of features that makes your social network more interactive.

They’ve created a hangout feature that allows video conferencing with 10 of your closest friends at a time. And they have a spark feature, which is just a simple way to see the latest news in your field of interests and share them with your circles.

Getting the Invite

Before I start giving the hands on, I did discover a unique quirk of Google Plus that was likely the cause of my delayed invitation.

When you get into Google Plus, you’ll notice a button in the bottom right sidebar for inviting others into Google Plus. It looks like this:

When I talk to my friends that are in google plus, it’s very natural for them to immediately think of using this button to invite people into the social network. The problem is that this invitation doesn’t work very well.

This invitation sends people to the main Google Plus screen where they will often see this message:

So, my recommendation is to not use that method to send out invites because it’s hit or miss.

I found that the better way to send out invites is to add the people that you want to invite to your circles. Then send out an update in your stream for that circle. When you do that, it gives you the option to invite all the people in the circle that are not already on Google Plus.

This second method sends out a working link in an email to your invitees. This email link appears to be consistent in actually getting a person into Google Plus.

This is kind of a strange work around, but it works.

Hands on With Google Plus

Ok, now that I got into Google Plus. I eagerly jumped around trying out it’s features.

Google Hangouts

I was most excited to try out Google Hangouts as it seems to have a lot of potential for interaction.

I was able to start a hangout with a friend and have a pretty good experience with the video chat.

I found that the quality of the video chat was almost on par with skype. I did experience a little bit of lag, so overall I think skype is slightly better. However, I would say that the difference is negligible enough that Hangouts is a solid competitor.

One thing that I though was interesting was the ability in Hangouts to share a youtube video with your friends.

A simple click of the youtube button at the bottom of your hangout screen brings up the youtube screen. Now you just select a video and all your friends in the hangout can watch it with you.

I can see people having a lot of fun with this options.

The more utilitarian use would be to set up simple webinars. The host can create a youtube tutorial video and then walk people through the video through the chat. The ability to be able to take questions, pause the video, and answer the questions is simply awesome.

Having the chat feature alongside the video interface was a simple, but brilliant idea. In the chat interface, my friend and I were able to quickly share links to other websites, while talking about it at the same time. This made it very easy to stay on the same page (so to speak).

One thing that Google Hangouts is missing is an interactive whiteboard. That would really complete this feature. Instead, I found myself sometimes drawing things on a piece of paper and holding it up to the camera to demonstrate some concepts that require some visualization.

I have yet to coordinate a large hangout, as I find my friends are coming online at all different times. I’m looking forward to see how it works when there is a large group in the hangout. If the quality doesn’t degrade, I can really see this feature winning out over skype.

Google Sparks

Google sparks is a really simple way to catch up on and share news from all over with your circles.

When you first click on sparks, it gives you some default categories, but you can always search for your own interests like so:

You can then click on the add interest button and pin that interest to your sparks list. In theory, this should make it really easy to get updates to your sparks. I did find it a bit buggy as I pinned several interests, but they disappeared when I logged back in.

When you find an interesting spark, you can simply hit the share button below the the spark to share it with your circles.

Once you share the spark it will show up in your stream. The beauty of this is that once something is in your stream, others can share that update with their circles as well. This has great potential to make news go viral.

Your Google Stream

This brings me to the Google Stream.

The interesting thing about Google Plus is that you can add anyone to your circles. There’s no need to send out a friend request and wait for the them to accept your request. Once you’ve added someone to your circle, you can immediately start seeing their updates.

It seems to me that Google gave some thought to figuring out the best way to ensure that news gets shared. When you post an update to your stream, your news immediately gets shared with your selected circles and anyone that is following you. If there are people who are not yet on the Google Plus social network, they will get an email with your news and the option to join Google Plus.

As I stated earlier, I could immediately see the potential for updates in your stream to go viral.

One thing you need to be careful about is that the circles feature does provide a false sense of privacy when you update your stream. Even though you can set your updates only to specific circles, Google defaults to allowing people in your circle to re-share your updates.

If you want news items to remain in your circle (What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas) then you can turn off re-sharing for that specific update.

At this time, it looks like you have to disable the function with each post. Google really should have a default selection for this function. Until they do, keep in mind that your posts are not as private as you think.

Google Plus Features I want

So, far I really like Google Plus. I can see that it has a lot of potential to share news throughout your social network. Also, there’s a lot of functions that nurture a very interactive environment. For a new social networking product, Google Plus really got all the fundamentals right.

Still, there are a couple of features I’d really love to see implemented.

First off, I have yet to find a way to easily tell when my friends are online. There is a chat feature that is supposed to tell you when people are available to chat, but so far, I’ve found it buggy. It only appears to work sporadically and doesn’t show all my friends. I’ve found myself in a hangout with a friend who didn’t even show up in my available chat list. I would say that this is a function where Facebook really wins out over Google Plus.

I’d love to have a feature in hangout to show my desktop and an interactive whiteboard feature would really be awesome. I can definitely see people making use of more interactive features in the hangout.

Finally, it would be nice to see some more obvious privacy functions. Circles really only gives you the illusion of privacy because everyone in your circle has the ability to re-share. The one thing they should really do is create a default function to disable re-sharing for all your posts. That way there won’t be any mistaken re-shared posts.

Conclusion

Google+ is a feature rich social networking platform that really has a lot of nuances. I can see that it will become a big player in social networking and may even become a strong Facebook competitor. I can already see that they will get many people to join simply through their invitation system of sending out emails to your friends who are not already on Google+.

I’ve only touched on the major features of Google Plus and already I’m really enjoying the experience.

So, I got a google Plus invite from a friend the other day. I was drooling with excitement when I got the email. I’ve heard so many awesome things about Google’s new social network that I’ve been dying to try it out myself. Woo hoo! I’m about to join the party!

The email was a simple with a red learn more about Google Plus Button at the bottom. Here’s what it looked like:

Features of Google Plus I’m Looking Forward to Trying Out

There are a number of new social networking features in Google Plus that are innovative. You can search the net and find all different lists of “killer” features. That by itself tells me that it caters to a number of different interests.

For those with android devices, you have features such as instant uploads when you take a picture. While I don’t have an android phone, I can see why this would be an attractive feature for the android social networker.

I’m primarily interested in trying out a couple of Google Plus’ more basic features.

The first major concept that they’ve implemented is the idea of having circles. Suppose you have certain friends that have a common interest, so you want to share certain things with them. But you don’t necessarily want to share the latest news about uncle Bob’s new wart. Well you can put those friends in a different circle. That way you can filter your sharing.

This is a brilliant idea that allows you to separate your groups without having to create a new account of worry about the news you are putting out to the public. Called into work sick, but you were out partying last night? No worries, now you can put your work friends into a different circle from your partying friends.

While this sounds like a pretty good idea, I’m really interested in using the feature hands on.

Mark Zuckerburg said that nobody is interested in creating lists. I agree with him as I fall into the camp of people that have a hard time managing lists.

It may be that Google’s concept of circles has made this process more simple and intuitive. However, I really need the hands on experience to see if it works. It could just be a clever list making tool in disguise. So, we’ll see.

The second feature that is creating a lot of buzz is the hangout feature.

I can’t wait to get my hands on this one. Hangouts is basically a persistent group video chatting feature. It allows you and 10 of your friends to hangout in a video chat. The best part is that once it’s created, it is persistent. So the creator of the hangout can step out and the hangout stays open. This really does remind me of the old days in school when I just “hung out” with my friends.

The best part is that I can have a video conference with so many people. This is a feature I can see many people latching onto and using immediately. Friends can hangout. Families can have an impromptu family reunion. Even large business meetings can be conducted in hangout.

I can certainly see this feature really cutting into Skype’s market share. Things will get really interesting when Facebook launches their competitor next week.

Rumor has it that Facebook is set to integrate Skype into it’s social network. However, if they are limited to only have 2 or 3 people in a video chat at a time, I think they will lose out to Google Plus.

Of all the features of Google Plus, I think the hangout feature is the one that is most likely to lure people onto Google’s social network.

So, with these couple of features in mind, I rubbed my hands together eagerly. I moused over the learn more button.

I clicked the button with anticipation.

It took me to the Google Plus screen where I saw this message:

Arghhhh!

What a cruel joke!

As it turns out Google Plus is apparently closed to new invitees. So, I have to wait for them to open up their trial to new invitees before I can join in.

Well, it’s back to the waiting game. I’d love to get a hands on experience with Google Plus. So, I’ll report back on it as soon as they give me an invitation…. For real.

Social Media is having it’s own trial by fire. In one of the largest social media trials to date, the Casey Anthony trial in Florida has literally consumed the internet and now her acquittal is the talk of the town.

Earlier this week the jury in the Casey Anthony trial came back with a surprise verdict of not guilty. Immediately, the social media world was abuzz with the news. Twitter was alive with outrage even as the news networks broadcasted the news on TV.

However, amidst all this sensationalism, there are underlying lessons to be learned about social media.

Social Media is a Powerful Marketing Tool

Of course, we often see the power of social media in marketing in many online ventures. However, this trial really demonstrates the effect that happens when social media intersects with traditional media.

The Casey Anthony trial was one of the most publicized trials in history. This is in large part due to social media.

Dubbed “the social media trial of the century” by Time magazine, the case generated untold number of tweets, including from the 9th Judicial Circuit Court itself, where the case was tried. In a sign of the unusual cultural reach of the case, reality TV star Kim Kardashian tweeted Tuesday after the verdict: “WHAT!!!!???!!!! I am speechless.” (from La Times Story)

Social Media more than anything else spurred the publicity in this trial. While traditional media may have caught the story and moved on to other items, social media really carried this story along. Word of mouth on twitter and facebook kept people interested in the day to day proceedings of the trial. Towards the end, people were riveted by the story and anxiously awaiting the outcome of the verdict.

With the surprise verdict, we now see the other side of social media.

Our justice system has acquitted Casey Anthony, but social media has not.

Should the Justice System be Crowd Sourced?

I thought this was an interesting phenomenon throughout the trial and afterwards.

In essence, this trial and the analysis behind the trial was crowd sourced unintentionally through social media.

In a case as emotionally polarizing as a child murder case, is this really a good thing? What we see now is an outpouring of raw emotion by all the people who have been following the case through social media, but do not have the same insight to the inner workings of the trial as the 12 jury members.

Remember, this is likely just the first proposed law to come out of the aftermath of the Casey Anthony trial.

Perhaps there are others in the making that follow the thoughts of this twitterer:

In a trial such as Casey Anthony’s which is based more on our system of reasonable doubt and the presumption of innocence, people become angry when they see someone who is acquitted because the evidence is not strong enough to overcome the presumption of innocence. However, that is the fundamental philosophy of our justice system.

Imagine if the verdict itself was crowd sourced. Will our justice system slowly evolve to the “prove you’re innocent” camp?

How long before someone proposes changing the Constitution?

How long before someone proposes changing the justice system to Guilty until Proven Innocent?

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